Help please, can't breathe, having regular panic attacks

Hi, can you help me please gang; I'm having a panic attack now so forgive my diction and spelling.

Two years ago I fell in love with someone......despite being married.....and despite this woman being my Wife's best friend. I'm not sure if it was stupidity or Genetic Sexual attraction; probably the former. Suffice to say, it ended badly, and with this woman living 20 miles away I have had nothing to do with her for two years and was starting to rebuild my life (after a fashion). Rather curiously, to the bemusement of all, my Wife stayed friends with this woman. Someone did suggest it may have been a plan concocted to give my Wife an extra stick to beat me with (I am sure she is a Narcissistic sociopath) but I don't know, I really don't.

And now......this woman has moved in 300 yards down the road, and her kid is in school with my son. The first I heard of it was when I bumped into her in the school playground - it was quite a shock to the system. I have pretended to be angry and furious about it, stomping around and making veiled threats, but the reality is that it is an act, and I am lovesick once again - and through no fault of my own, I don't want to be here and I thought it was all in my past.

It is all confusing my Wife, who rather bizarrely wants us all to be friends again (WTF?) and thinks we should talk about it. However, I don't think this other woman will talk about because 2 years ago, she got herself off the hook by concocting a whole tissue of lies to effectively get herself off the hook scot free.....and once the talking starts, it'll all unravel.

But on the other hand, I have been so agitated twice that I have nearly crashed the car twice.

The exact thought process...the very idea that you would even dream of messaging her is very clear evidence of why you had the problem in the first place. The question of whether or not you should message her shows you have made bad decisions in the past and you didn’t learn anything! Now, you want to continue making bad decisions and expect a different result.

This idea that another person controls you is BS. Your wife doesn’t control you. This other woman doesn’t control you.

If I was in your position, I know exactly the decision I would make. I wouldn’t be in a relationship with a narcissist sociopath. All other priorities would be secondary. 100% of my focus/energy would be on solving that problem, nothing else.

This other women, would be a non-issue in my life, because as long as I was choosing to stay in a bad marriage, this would be where I would focus my energy. I would be reflecting on what is wrong with me and why I was choosing to stay in this marriage.

So share with us. Why are you choosing to stay in a bad marriage? Why are you forced, a slave, incapable of the freedom to make your own decision to leave a bad relationship? What is it about your situation that forces you against your will to stay with this woman?

Ah yes...you want to believe that you are helpless, that you have no choice but to stay married. You want to believe that you have no ability to address the much larger, primary problems in your life, so you ask advice about secondary issues that in the context of the much larger issues is irrelevant.

Here is the struggle for any person trying to provide you helpful advice. You want to hear only what you want to hear. You have repeatedly made bad decisions, and when told you are on the path to once again making even more bad decisions, you don't want to hear it. When told you need to focus on the primary problems, you don't want to hear it. When told what you don't want to hear, you try to focus and shift blame onto others, as if others are in control of the choices you make.

And you try to guilt others into telling you what you want to hear, e.g. a reference to a need in the future for an inquest. If someone gives you advice you don't like, you make yet another bad decision and try to use guilt.

I hope you don't try to guilt your children, your wife, and this other woman. But, given how quickly you used it in here, it is probably one of the tools you think works. I suggest you take a long hard look at your approach to problems. Stop blaming others, take responsibility, and focus on the bigger issues in your life.

You first wrote to this forum eleven years ago. You claim you're there for the children, but how have your children, who are now eleven years older, benefitted by the two of you being at each other's throats for most or probably all of their lives?

My wife stabbed me in the chest with a Knife before we got married, and the truth is we shouldn't have gone through with it.

Do you want peace of mind? Drop everything. Drop everything, including your thoughts and thinking. It's you believing all of your thinking that keeps you tied to this situation. Guess what? It's all an illusion.

It's an illusion that you have to be tied to this situation. You can make different choices. But first you have to drop away from your attachments to your thinking, then allow yourself to see things in a different way. (In case anyone thought I was saying that it's all an illusion, so that nothing really matters.)

You have the right to walk away from your situation. You have to be brave. You will be relieved that you did so. Regarding your children the Courts take everything into account about the father's situation. You only have one life. Dont stay in your unhappy situation. Be happy. You derserve peace and happiness.